Given the extremely poor end-users and limited business activity that has been ongoing in the UAE for two weeks, optimism regarding price increases and the local market's recovery has begun to dwindle. As a consequence of the continued adverse trends in the Emirates market, hot rolled coil (HRC) suppliers have decided to retain their positions from last week and continue to monitor the market.
“Activities are too slow and the Emirates market is not attractive at all because end users’ demand is very weak,” a representative of a major re-roller said to SteelOrbis.
Over the past week, ex-China offers for SS400 HRC have stayed unchanged as the previous week at $590-600/mt CFR for September shipment.
Meanwhile, suppliers in India have opted to continue not offering the UAE market for reasons of unappealing trade activities, although according to market reports, offers from a few Indian suppliers have been around $620/mt CFR to UAE. Aside from the widespread pessimistic forecasts, the largest Indian exporter believes that optimism has not faded and that prices would finally rebound.
“I do not believe that optimism is fading, it simply requires time for recovery, pessimism is the customer's expectation. But they (the customers) have at least moved up from high $500s to low $600s,” an Indian major exporter said to SteelOrbis.
Similarly, South Korea has also continued to not offer HRC as situation in the domestic market in UAE has remained depressed.